


Who's Your Captive

by TheMalapert



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Grief/Mourning, I'm not a monster, M/M, Pining, Pining for Death, Sad Sleepovers, happy endings, mental breakdowns, serious klangst, the gang's all here, ye be warned
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-08 08:23:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11642661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMalapert/pseuds/TheMalapert
Summary: Lance has never been held prisoner before. There's a first time for everything. Keith has suffered and broken over losing people. Some things never change, but somehow, this felt so much worse.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based off a Tumblr prompt that I read while I was scrolling through the Voltron tag. If anyone reads this and recognizes the prompt, please get in touch with me. I'd love to link the prompt here.

Lance knew that this was without a doubt the worst day of his life, and that included the time he’d walked in on Hunk having some special alone time back at the Garrison. Bound at the wrists and ankles, he was kneeling at the mercy of three Galra guards and one lieutenant giddy with being tasked to look after the captured Paladin. Lance was tingling from the electric shock staves the guards carried, having tried to escape a few too many times. He couldn’t feel his fingers and as such, was worrying more about his circulation than his predicament. Really, it was a coping mechanism because if he started thinking about how pointy that Galra sword was and how easy it would be for the footsteps he heard walking down the hall to turn into the cramped chamber and lob off his -

Wow he needed to cool his jets. Work on his master plan to escape.

His first step: get out of the damn cuffs.

Failed step one.

They were space cuffs! He had no idea if they even had a lock for him to pick. He might be able to figure it out if he could see them, but no dice. Apparently, the hands-behind-your-back thing was universal. He wondered if there were cuffs for aliens with tentacles, but his train of thought was rudely interrupted by one of the guards pulling him to his feet. Technically, he wasn’t on his feet. He was wobbling, feet pulled awkwardly together by the shackles, only held up by one big purple hand under his arm and sheer dumb luck. He was slowly panicking again. What if they sent him to the arena like Shiro? He didn’t know how long he would last in hand to hand with buff, grisly aliens. He’d been doing better against Keith in practice, but that dude was wicked fast. It was unreal. Stupid, dumb Keith with his gross mullet and that crappy frown like Jesus did he ever smile. Lance swore if he ever got out of this, Keith would fucking smile for him.

This was all the mullet’s fault anyway. It was his idea for the recon mission, probably to find out more about his family, and of course Pidge supported it because she wanted to find out anything on her brother. They snuck onto a Galra frigate using a stolen fighter and modified the armor of two sentries to fit Keith and Lance. Why Shiro chose Lance, he would never know. Clearly, something was off about that plan. Wait no, Lance was blaming Keith and was sticking to that story. Keith had tripped the alarm in the computer system when he tried to access something Pidge was screaming at him not to. That’s when the guards showed up. They fought their way to an escape pod, and Keith was knee deep in Galra fighters. What could Lance have done to save his space crush? Oh that’s right, he took a bolt to the thigh, shoved Keith into the pod, and before he was overwhelmed, launched the pod. Without him on it.

He never claimed to be bright nor to have an overabundance of self preservation instincts.

A new player walked into the small holding room, sniffed and scowled at the scent of burnt flesh. Lance’s flight suit didn’t smell too hot either, but the tinge of rubber was overpowered by the strong I forgot the turkey in the oven stench.

“The paladins have retreated. Put him in his own containment cell to await Prince Lotor’s commands. See to it that he receives… special treatment,” the Galra said. Lance had a sneaking suspicion that special was more suffering and less deep tissue massage. What he would give for some kiwi lotion and a hot masseuse.

“Hey fellas, no need to rush,” Lance blurted when two clawed hands gripped under his arms and pulled him off balance. “I’ve got all day.”

It was then that he received the first of his treatment, and he could say that without a doubt it was the furthest thing from a shiatsu he’d ever experienced. He grit his teeth to keep from crying out, was down on his knees again without remembering when he dropped. They didn’t wait for him to regain his wits, dragging him like a ragdoll through the ship. It was just as well; he couldn’t walk with those damn ankle cuffs anyways. He could probably hop, but that would just be humiliating. He imagined some windowless cell, dark and damp with some unknown space fluid, but before he could be tossed into the dungeons, they stopped dragging him. Lance tried to look back and could see the feet of the two guards plus one long cloak brushing just about the floor.

“He will first be examined,” a higher, yet still very rough voice commanded. The hands on him hesitated, unsure of which orders to follow, but this person was apparently more intimidating. They broke off the main hall down a set of stairs which surprise, surprise they didn't bother lifting him off of. He bumped along, trying to avoid hitting his thigh wound. The cloaked individual glided along behind them, and that gave Lance ample time to examine his new captor. They were tall and thin, more graceful than most Galra, but cloaked and masked like some sort of magician. As it turned out, he wasn’t too far off the mark which was an unimaginably bad turn for Lance.

He was taken into a new room with high ceilings and a lovely lighting pattern not to mention what looked like a creepy torture table situated over some sigils carved in what he assumed were the cardinal directions. Then he realized there were no cardinal directions in space which made him feel infinitely more lost than he had before.

“I don’t suppose that’s a massage table? I’ve got some huge knots in my shoulders,” Lance said. He couldn’t help it. The masked one tilted their head.

“Cute.” Lance wondered if Galran beauty standards would have actually considered him cute. He supposed Galra didn’t have to be all surface. Maybe this wizard was more into guys who were funny, you know - had personality.

“If you think that’s cute, wait until I break out the rhymes. I’ve got limericks for days, baby,” he replied smoothly. Oh god, did he really just call a masked alien wizard baby? Why did his nervous tick have to be flirting? Well, the answer was because he was so damn good at it obviously, but his particular charms didn’t seem to be working on the wizard.

“Put him on the table,” the wizard ordered. Lance was lifted and manoeuvred onto the surface. It was cold, but that wasn’t unwelcome. His skin was a little feverish from being anxious for the past however many hours. They released his handcuffs, keeping a tight grip on his wrists, before locking them into place at his sides with some sort of light. Laser cuffs? He tried to lift his head to check them out, but a purple hand shoved his face back. More light spouted over his throat, keeping his head pressed against the table. It provided a great view of the ceiling.

As the guards gave his shackled feet a similar treatment, he laughed nervously. “I don’t usually start with bondage, I mean leave somewhere for the night to go, you know?”

“You are an interesting one,” the wizard said. “I am going to collect some of your quintessence for analysis. Do you know what that means?”

“I haven’t won an all-expense-paid vacation?” He could have sworn he heard Allura talking about quintessence, but hell if he listened to half the nonsense those Alteans spouted. Well, it wasn’t nonsense necessarily; it just flew over his head.

“No. I will be extracting energy from you. My mistress has a theory about paladins and similar quintessence. Please try to relax through the procedure.” It was all very clinical, but it somehow didn’t feel medical. The runes and the table all gave him a creepy ritual vibe. That was some bruja shit that he absolutely did not want to be involved in, but here he was.

“Oh okay if that’s all,” he muttered and shifted in the binds. No getting out of them.

“Prepare yourself,” she warned, and it began.

It was like being unmade. Every nerve ending was brushed over carefully, precisely, and then unraveled in flames. Electricity tingled up his throat onto the back of his tongue, and he could taste a metallic bitterness like sucking on a penny. He knew he was flailing. The cuffs kept him from vibrating off the table, but they were a small mercy since there wasn’t any chance of chafing. His skin felt like was tearing at the seams, cracking from the bonfire inside, and then it was over. He didn’t know how long it had gone on, but his mouth had gone dry. His muscles ached already. The beginnings of a headache were building in the back of his head, pressure that pulled on his consciousness.

“How was I?” He quipped hoarsely. The wizard was tapping away at a console that appeared out of nowhere.

“I enjoy your flavor,” they said excitedly. “It is very vibrant yet clear. It is hard to explain, but it flows and morphs. It is very free.”

“You know what they say about guys with free quintessence,” he said and tried to throw his best smolder. The wizard was uninterested in his comments, perhaps never was. They began talking and gesticulating too fast for Lance to keep up.

“I need more,” they suddenly said, and the process started again.

Lance lost count of how many times it happened or how long it went on. Sometimes he would pass out, and when he woke, he knew they’d allowed him to sleep for a while. It was about draining his energy, and boy he could tell. Every time left him raw and exhausted. While the wizard was giving him a rest, Lance heard the door to the room woosh open. He cracked one eye and saw a blurry Galran approach the wizard.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He seethed, invading the wizard’s space.

“Y-Your majesty, I was simply pursuing my - ”

“Nevermind. Remove the restraints.” Lance felt a strange weight lift from him, and instinctively, he began to roll off the table. No way was he staying on it any longer. He braced himself for impact but was caught by two strong, purple arms.

“Take your experiments elsewhere witch! You’ll have no more to do with this paladin,” the voice barked, right next to Lance’s head. He was set on the ground, head cradled up, so a bottle could be pressed to his lips. Without thinking, Lance drank deeply from it, tasting nothing but cool, refreshing water. After having sucked it all down, he felt slightly rejuvenated, enough to peek open his eyes. He was greeted with a concerned face. A purple concerned face, because as it just so happened, concern was one of those faces that was cross-species. He wondered how much body language humans and Galra shared.

“Paladin of Voltron,” the Galra cradling him said, addressing him with a sort of reverent respect. “What is your name?”

Lance blamed the torture on the loopiness of his response.

“My name is Lance but you can call me…” His head lolled over to look up at the Galra fully. “Anytime.”

The last thing he remembers before blacking out was feeling a rumbling in the Galra’s chest, pressed against his side as he was being lifted. Carried. The woosh of the door blew away the last of his awareness, and he drifted.

________________________________________  


Keith vaulted out of the escape pod a sprinted to the bridge. Panic. He couldn’t think past it. It was all-encompassing, drowning him in adrenaline and shaking limbs. He couldn’t believe what just happened. Everything had gone to shit, and he couldn’t do anything about it. And Lance. Lance was - Keith nearly slammed into the automatic doors before rushing into the command center.

“Why didn’t you come?” He started to demand, but the rest of his speech died as he saw the smirking Galra on the holoscreen.

“Ah, I suppose this is the red pilot. I am glad you’re all here now. I am Prince Lotor of the Galran Empire. That is my flagship you have just poorly infiltrated,” Lotor said. Keith was about to spit fire, but Shiro sliced his hand through the air, a clear order to shut it.

“You now have one of our allies. I suppose you would like a trade,” Shiro said, too damn diplomatic. They should be threatening him. Keith would tear apart that flagship himself if it meant he’d find Lance again.

“You misunderstand the meaning of this transmission. This is a courtesy not a negotiation. Your paladin is dead.”

Keith’s world spun. It couldn’t be true. He opened his mouth to scream, but nothing came up. His throat had closed, suffocating, but he was gulping down air; it was the words that wouldn’t come. His hands clenched around what was closest - his bayard. He didn’t remember taking it out of his pocket, but it was there. He was going to explode, needed to get this out, to demand answers and the truth and Lance.

Pidge beat him to it and advanced on the projected image, fists clenched, and yelling, “You’re a liar! You have him - where is he?” A flash of irritation on the Prince’s face lead into anger then smoothed into disgust.

“You do not think highly enough of your comrade. He would not be taken alive,” Lotor seethed. “Which is a shame. He would have made an excellent Champion.” That made Shiro stiffen and bare his teeth, dropping the diplomatic facade. He looked like he was about to say something when Allura smoothly interrupted. She spoke in a low, even voice that held every rage imaginable.

“Prince Lotor, listen to me very carefully and believe me when I say for this you will pay the highest price. We will hunt down every miserable scrap of your empire and burn it to the ground. You will suffer beyond reckoning, and you will fall before the might of Voltron.” Her eyes glowed fiercely, a slim film of tears the only evidence of her grief. The room was silent, every gaze fixed on the slow smirk that spread across Lotor’s face.

“How will you form Voltron with only four paladins?” He questioned, and that broke Keith’s stillness. He flashed forward, snarling like an animal. Hunk and Shiro caught his arms to hold him back from smashing into the wall.

“I’m going to kill you!” He screamed, and Lotor turned a bored gaze to him.

“If only your friend had not sacrificed himself,” the Prince mused. “I would have much prefered to kill the Red paladin. But alas, that of least import is still of some, so I cannot complain.”

Keith was going to threaten him again, to rant and yell about every nasty fate he was planning for that fucking Princeling, but the feed cut off, a loud boom following.

“They’ve begun their attack!” Coran called, focusing back on his duties. “That ship has firepower like we’ve never seen. We can’t stay here long.” As Allura barked commands from her post, Keith marched out the door. He knew Shiro was following him, but he couldn’t care past the blinding, white-hot rage boiling in his gut. He could still hear Allura through the comms, and she was ordering a wormhole to open. He broke into a sprint, and Shiro followed. Just before getting to the hangar for his lion, Shiro managed to tackle him. Keith writhed, trying to break his hold, but Shiro was strong and determined.

“Let me go,” Keith grit through his teeth, but Shiro held him tightly, not hurting just restraining.

“I want to go after Lotor too,” Shiro said, and he wasn’t calm. His voice was rough, tight, mirroring Keith’s own. The wormhole was open; it would only be a matter of seconds before they were halfway across the galaxy. “But he’s right. We can’t form Voltron, and we can’t beat him. Not right now.”

“Let go!” Keith tried to roll forward, but Shiro had taught him that move, compensated before he could get off balance.

“You can’t help him if he’s dead,” Shiro breathed. Allura confirmed that they were through, they were safe, but no one sounded relieved. Keith deflated; he knew he couldn’t get his revenge anymore. Shiro carefully pulled away from him.

Keith screamed, and he lunged forward, smashing his head against the wall. The blow stunned him, scattered his thoughts, success. He felt Shiro’s arms catch him as he fell back, but it was distant. Shiro was talking, being concerned, like he always was. A headache was blooming in his forehead. He knew he was going to spend the next few hours in a quiet, dark room with a glass of water and some space aspirin if he didn’t want to feel like he was dying.

(Somehow, it already felt like that.)

Shiro helped him to his room, asked if he wanted to be left alone. Like a petulant child, he turned his back and refused to respond. Shiro left then, and Keith was alone. This wasn’t better, but it was more familiar. Keith had always been alone. Shiro was the first person to ever really stick around, but then he disappeared. This was worse because while Shiro had wanted the Kerberos mission, had gone MIA, had become one of Keith’s conspiracy theories… Lance was just gone. Slipped through his fingers. Lance who wouldn’t dare leave Keith alone because then who would annoy him? Lance who shot sunshine and sarcasm out of his ass 24/7. Was gone. Keith only knew how to deal with that when he was alone.

Because he was always alone.


	2. Chapter 2

Lance was warm, and wow, was that jasmine he smelled? It reminded him of home and not the castle. His proper home back on Earth. His cousin Josephine had begged for a jasmine plant for months, but after she got it, she let it run wild across the fences in the backyard. She never did anything to it, didn’t water or fertilize it, but somehow it lived to bloom year after year. It would look sorry in the winter; everyone would say that this was the year it would die. Then it bloomed again, showing off just how hardy it was. He wondered if it was in bloom again.

Like shadows creeping across a courtyard in the evening, consciousness crept up on Lance. At first it was just the absence of pain that registered, and he basked in it for a few moments before moving on to the absolute bliss that were the silky sheets he slept on. It was a treat, for sure, for someone who had been so recently housed in very spartan Altean quarters. His mind went adrift in the incoming tide of his awareness before snapping back into place that he should certainly not be feeling comfortable right now. He pulled himself to fully alert, a struggle in itself. He felt foggy like he’d been asleep for a while or he’d been drugged. His bet was on both.

His eyes peeked open, blinking to adjust to the low light. He was lying stretched out in the middle of a huge round bed inset into the floor by two steps. The room itself was rounded as well, an oval with the bed at one end and the door at the other. Arches of smooth grey metal grew out of the walls naturally like the room  was the inside of a ribcage, and Lance on the bed was the heart. A band of lights ran around the base of the walls, set to a dim yellow glow like distant starlight. When Lance rolled over, he felt a twinge in his thigh and stickiness against the bed. He glanced down to see that his burn had been treated with some sort of ointment and was healing nicely. Well that was… nice. He hadn’t expected any courtesy from the alien locusts who devoured whole planets.

“Paladin Lance, I see you are awake,” a voice said, respecting the silence of the room and lowering his voice so as not to disturb it. A Galran, tall and robed in a similar hue to his skin, stepped down onto the plush mattress with a tray in one hand. Lance curled up and shifted to the head of the bed, putting distance between them. “As you can see, no harm will come to you here. You must be very hungry. Allow me to offer you something to eat.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, putting the tray in front of him and folding his legs to wait patiently. The tray held a white bowl and what looked like a jar of jelly. Alas there was no space toast.

Lance’s face scrunched, and he said, “I don’t know what that’s going to do to me.”

“If I wanted to kill you, I very well could have done it while you slept,” the Galran reminded him airily. Lance let out a shaky laugh, eyeing the food carefully. It was less like Altean space goo and more along the lines of space stew. This goo was runnier and had more chunks. Appetizing.

“No offense, but you aren’t a human doctor or anything. It doesn’t have to be poisoned specifically for it to kill me. Catch my drift?” Lance, personally mortified by his sudden loss of vocabulary, watched as an amused confusion flickered over his captor’s face.

“I believe we have more in common than you might think.” And when Lance sneered, ready to say that fuck no he wasn’t anything like you assholes, he clarified, “Biologically speaking.”

Well, Lance supposed Keith’s mom did fuck his dad, and so if humans and Galra were reproductively compatible, they were probably gastrointestinally compatible. Besides, Lance felt like he could out-eat Hunk.

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” he muttered and inched forward to take the bowl. It sloshed a little because he might have snatched it up, and it spilled onto the tray. An apology stuck behind his teeth, as his disregard for the alien assholes overrode his manners.

“I am Prince Lotor, by the way. I did not get a chance to properly introduce myself before you passed out,” the Prince said with a smirk. Lance, halfway through pouring the meal down his throat, tried not to choke. He spiraled through the things that were now true:

1) The current leader of Voltron’s (and the universe’s) arch enemy had him captive.

2) He’d just been given a bowl of space stew by the current leader of an army that was dedicated to the slow, preventable death of the universe.

3) He hadn’t been rescued yet.

4) Seriously, they had Allura back in like a day after she was taken.

5) Lance was pretty sure it had been more than a day. Just saying.

6) The evil leader of the race of boogeymen was still staring at him, and it was making him blush. Like damn, can’t a man inhale some space stew in peace?

“Lovely to make your acquaintance, your majesty,” Lance said through a mouth of stew. He gulped what he had down and set the empty bowl beside him on the bed. He matched the Prince’s stance, crossing his legs under him, but Lotor was still a solid head taller, at least while they were sitting.

“It is refreshing to find a prisoner with such etiquette. Not many in your position would show such respect,” Lotor observed. Prisoner. Lance felt more like a damsel in distress. He wondered if that would make the rest of Voltron his knights in shining armor. (Keith was the dragon, no doubt.) And yet prisoners weren’t put in lavish accommodations, didn’t have the Prince waiting on them. Prisoners were shackled and tortured like he had been before.

“I’ll make sure to insult you more next time. It’s actually a skill of mine,” Lance said and flashed a smile that was more confident than he’d felt in days. It seemed like Lotor had a permanent smirk stuck curving his lips. He moved to take the jelly from the tray and gestured for Lance to move towards him. No way in hell was that happening but A for effort.

“Your wound requires redressing. It will not heal properly otherwise,” Lotor explained.

Lance shook his head vigorously, saying, “Nope. No thanks. I’m all good.” He absolutely refused to have Prince Lotor’s claws anywhere near his thighs. They were his best quality besides his face. Lotor seemed pleasantly dissatisfied if one could call it that, setting the jar down gently.

“I assume this is some sort of privacy issue? I will wait outside if that is what you'd prefer,” he said and rose to step out of the bed. “My chambers have fresh towels and bandages, and you will find a washroom through those doors.”

Lance’s mind sputtered to a halt, as he choked out, “Your chambers??”

“Of course. A noble Paladin of Voltron should receive only the highest care,” Lotor replied haughtily before crossing his arms and giving a little half-shrug. “Besides, this room doesn’t see much use. It is a shame for dust to gather in such a lovely place while I am off running an empire.”

Lance was baffled. Truly and utterly baffled. In a daze worthy of a zombie, he took the small jar and shuffled over to the bathroom doors. He heard Lotor exit but didn’t bother turning around to check. There were no handles on the door, but it slid open at his touch. The bathroom looked very much like a bathroom would. It seemed this too was common among most species. Lance slouched his way to the sink, and, grabbing a towel from a nearby cabinet, he wet it with warm water. Carefully, he dabbed at the wound. It still hurt like a bitch to touch, but he suffered through it and had it cleaned off fairly quickly. He spread the jelly which he expected to sting, but it was pleasantly cool, almost minty. Once the task was complete, Lance turned around to assess himself in the floor length mirror. (Apparently Galra were also somewhat vain. Imagine.)

His flight suit was a wreck; no salvaging that with even all the thread in his grandmother’s sewing kit. It had been ripped at either shoulder, torn down his torso, and of course there was the large burned hole in his thigh. His hair was a mess, and it was as greasy as a stripper’s abs. His skin, so easily dried-out, was looking positively sickly. If he were at home, he’d take a full three days to spa and get himself back to his usual glowing self. And yet, here he was. His eyes trailed down and stopped at the thin circlet around his ankle. Light as a feather, it had gone unnoticed, but the faintly illuminated Galran symbols indicated it had definitely been put on while he was sleeping. Thus, Lance came to another disturbing realization; one of many that day.

7) He was a pet.

 

Keith found himself in Lance’s room not ten minutes after Shiro left. It was quiet. Lance’s room wasn’t as messy as Keith would have expected. Lotions and soaps were neatly organized atop a chest of drawers that had only one drawer hanging open. The bed wasn’t made, but Keith didn’t mind. He turned the lights down just low enough that he could barely see, and accompanied only by his pounding headache, he crawled into Lance’s bed. How many times had he guiltily fantasized about being here? The thought made bitter ire clench in his throat. Lance deserved better. He was annoying, but damn it Keith couldn’t help but fall for those stupid lines and flirtations that weren’t even meant for him. Even when Lance was just joking around, no one had ever flirted with Keith - a side effect of having lived in the middle of AssFuck, Nowhere and having lost his parents so young. It really threw him the first time, and he had made some face that made Lance pout and go on a mini-rant about how Keith couldn’t take a joke. He could, okay? It was just getting used to them that was the problem. He’d even started to make jokes to Hunk, who he felt would be the least likely judge and the most likely to laugh.

But in the dark of a dead man’s room, it didn’t really feel like it mattered anymore.

Keith held the pillow to his face and breathed in, wondering how long it would take for Lance’s smell to wither away completely. A vivid sensory memory surfaced in his mind, and he squeezed back tears at the scent. It was something simple, passing Lance in the hallway, but it had been the first time Keith could put a name to how the boy smelled. It was the ocean. Keith had been in the desert so long, he hadn’t even recognized the sea when he smelled it. That, of course, became a perfect metaphor for how his feelings developed. After years of building walls and living on his own, Lance had washed over his tangled emotions without him even realizing it. Sure as the tide, Lance drowned Keith, but it was really just teaching him a new way to breathe. But now the tide was out. For good.

He shouldn’t have been surprised when the door opened. Keith turned and, blinking at the sudden brightness in the room, found Pidge standing in the doorway. She was in her nightclothes without her glasses, and she seemed relieved to find Keith there. Neither one of them much for words, he pushed himself against the wall so she could climb in. The bed was only marginally wider than an Earth twin bed, but they weren’t very concerned with comfort at the moment. She toed off her fluffy sandals and snuggled in, choosing to lay next to his feet to give them more room. He passed her a pillow. It was quiet again, but this quiet was better. Having Pidge there was comforting, and the fact that she wasn’t going to press him was a sheer blessing. He wondered what Pidge’s relationship with Lance was like. How did she see him? He was biased, obviously, playing both the part of nemesis and pining puppy dog. Did she see things about Lance that he didn’t? He wanted to know, but it was quiet. That’s when Hunk arrived.

He was sniffling and turned the light back on when he came in. Hunk stopped, staring at them like he was caught sneaking around after hours.

“I can go,” he said, sounding like he would literally rather walk into space without his flight suit. Pidge frowned, even more than she already was, and jerked her head to motion for him to join them. Keith was about to move when Hunk dropped to the floor next to the bed, leaning heavily on it. His face was wet. Keith didn’t know what to do anymore because it wasn’t quiet anymore but still no one was talking. What words could possibly make this any better? Keith didn’t know any, but then again, he never really knew what to say. He didn’t think a sour look and a grunt was appropriate for the situation.

“How are you doing?” Pidge asked softly. Thank god for Pidge. She was the youngest but honestly the most developed out of any of them except maybe Shiro.

“I don’t think I can do this anymore,” Hunk replied, oddly calm despite the fresh tears on his cheeks. It tore at Keith because damn if those weren’t the words he was looking for. Pidge shifted, sitting up and back against the wall. Keith followed her lead and curled up in the corner with his knees to his chest.

“Yes you can,” Pidge said. “I need you to help me find my brother. The universe needs you to protect it.” I need to find where I come from, Keith appended for himself. He had a mission. They had a mission. One fallen comrade couldn’t break Voltron. They would be off saving another planet tomorrow with or without the Blue Lion. They had to, you know? They couldn’t just abandon the universe to burn over one man no matter how fantastic, how amazing, how much Keith needed him.

“You’re right,” Hunk breathed, defeated. Keith understood that.

“People deserve our help whether we’re five or four,” Pidge said.

“What’s even the point?” Keith spat, and he didn’t know where the sudden anger came from but it felt better than the grief. “We can’t beat the Galra empire if we can’t form Voltron, and we can’t. Not without Lance.” Saying his name was its own new hell; it clawed in Keith’s chest, as inescapable as it was intense.

“Well now that you put it like that we should all just throw up our hands and say ‘oh well’ while whole planets get fucking destroyed,” Pidge snapped back, and every nasty comment Keith might have said was rudely shoved back down his throat, like swallowing bile. It was an ugly, biting shame that now crested the whirling tide of his emotions.

“Shay…” Hunk said quietly, and Keith was alone in his frustration. He hadn’t meant it; it just came out in the moment. He wasn’t suggesting they put in their two weeks and head home. He just didn’t want - couldn’t take it - needed -

The door slid open, and Shiro sauntered in, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked up and said, “I guess I’m last to the party huh?”

“Keith wants to leave,” Pidge said accusingly and woah, where did that come from?

“That isn’t what I said,” he defended. “I just - ” Like usual, he didn’t know how to continue. He looked to Shiro who had always been able to understand him, even when Keith refused to talk.

“I get it,” Shiro said, and Keith relaxed his shoulders just a bit. “We’ve lost an important team member. A friend. Lance was - ”

“An idiot,” Pidge interjected. “He’s always been like this. Even back at the Garrison, he would take the heat when I got in trouble for mouthing off.”

Hunk, despite his state, started giggling. He started to recount a time when Lance had convinced him to sneak into the kitchens while the staff were in a meeting to snag some extra desserts. It was chocolate chip cookie Monday, and boy was that Hunk’s weakness. They got caught, of course, and were sentenced to laundry duty for three weeks. Laundry duty wasn’t as bad as bathroom duty, but the only reason they hadn’t been assigned that was because a girl from the upper class had been caught fingering her girlfriend in a teacher’s office so bathroom duty was booked for the rest of the semester. Lance was able to trade out Hunk’s three weeks for two math homeworks and three days of kitchen duty (which Hunk infinitely preferred). Lance managed to get out of his by taking an engineering prodigy to a local strip club. One fifteen minute lap dance, and the kid would have let Lance punch him in the face if he so fancied.

And suddenly, it was Lance storytelling time. Pidge recounted one instance where she’d pissed off a teacher, and they’d said something along the lines of you’re lucky they don’t let us spank you anymore. The room went dead silent, a standoff between Pidge and the teacher. All Lance had to say was ‘kinky’, and then it was Lance getting detention and sent to the principal’s office. Again. She’d heard that they had a special seat in detention that they saved for Lance, that he’d made a sign for it and everything.

“Do you remember when Sendak took over the castle?” Shiro said.

Hunk huffed and replied, “How could I not? Lance was in a healing pod for a whole day.”

“You know he was only hurt so bad because he shielded Coran from the blast, right? Coran told me Lance noticed something was off right away and that he would probably be dead if not for Lance.” Shiro let a small smile grace his lips before returning to his somber air. “He was a clever kid.”

Keith balled himself up, holding tighter with every new story. He had to keep himself from flying apart, and the cutting pressure of his knees to his chest kept him from doing so. He wanted to tell his story. He wanted everyone to know, but it was lodged in his throat like a pill he didn’t swallow correctly.

Finally he was able to say quietly, “I kissed him.”

Everyone looked at him, and he burrowed his face into his knees, speaking into himself.

“It was after a practice, and I had worked him really hard on his hand-to-hand. He just fucking fell asleep sitting against the wall when we were taking a rest. He had done such a good job, and I really really like him so I did it. He didn’t wake up.” He let it hang there before peeking up. Shiro was smiling, but his eyes were sad.

“So all of that fighting…” He said, and Keith let his knees fall while he gestured wildly.

“He can’t do anything right, especially without his guns, and maybe if he had listened to me more, he wouldn’t have had to - do that!” Keith didn’t mean to go there, but he couldn’t take it back. He watched as the mood once again soured.

“This is a hard time,” Shiro said slowly, evenly. Like an overworked school grief counselor. “And I know it can be easy to blame yourself, but Keith, it is not your fault. None of this is your fault, and I want you to know that.”

“He’s right,” Pidge chimed in before she levelled a piercing glare at their leader. “It’s yours. That was too small of an infiltration team, and you should have known something would go wrong. You should have been there.”

The tension made the air thick, almost unbreathable. Keith rejected the idea. It wasn’t Shiro’s fault, it was his, but then he started thinking - damn his mutinous thoughts. He turned it over, and maybe, yes if Shiro had been there, they could have fought off more of the drones. They could have made it out. Lance would still be - He stopped himself before he could even think it. There was no going back - he was gone - and Keith had to accept that, except Shiro could have stopped it.

“I know,” Shiro replied, and he and Pidge stared at each other a long time before she finally looked back to Hunk. He was shaking his head, muttering.

“It doesn’t matter,” Keith said, and he realized he was desperate to keep this team, this new family, from fracturing. Fault and blame were useless when they had one path ahead of them. They still had a job to do.

It fell silent again, and Pidge yawned without warning, passing the spirit of fatigue to the rest of them. It had been a long day. Not wanting to go back to their own quarters, Hunk and Shiro dragged mattresses in from nearby rooms. So they could stay together. So they could stay with Lance the best way they knew how. Keith didn’t mind sharing the bed with Pidge. Her warmth was comforting, even after what she’d said. Shiro turned the lights back down low, and Keith stared at the blinking lights on the room’s control panel. None of them slept all that much. Keith couldn’t help himself from thinking about what the future would look like. Part of the reason he’d left the Garrison was because after a few months, everyone just forgot about the Kerberos mission. No one cared anymore. He kept himself up with that one disturbing question: how long would it take Lance to fade?


	3. Chapter 3

There was a set of clothes on the bed when Lance came out. He ignored them even though his flight suit was disgusting because fuck that. He was 85% leg anyways, so they probably wouldn’t fit.

There wasn’t much in the way of entertainment - which like, go figure. There was the bed, the bathroom, and a desk. Everything was all sleek lines and flowing arches, tinged purple where it wasn’t grey. Galrans definitely had a style. Lance trotted over to the desk and placed a hand on it. It began to glow, Galra characters appearing like a lock screen on a huge iPad. He sighed and slouched into the chair. It, at least, was something normal. Four legs and completely moveable. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself back at the Garrison, avoiding some homework or catching a quick nap before a round in the simulator. He could almost hear Hunk’s steady breathing before the woosh of the door snapped him back to reality.

His head whipped around, and he saw a rover-bot hovering its merry way into the room. The last time he’d seen one, it hadn’t really gone over well, so his reaction was understandable. Lance rolled off the chair, crouching down low, before taking hold of the back of the chair. Picking it up - it was heavier than he’d expected - he charged at the bot. The little pyramid turned lazily to greet him but was swatted out of the air with a satisfying clang. It made a sad beeping noise that slid off into a low, rapid metronome. Lance hit it again for good measure, and it went silent.

Wires exposed and plates bent out of place, the bot had skidded a decent distance from the door. Lance was riding a bit of an adrenaline rush when he kneeled down to inspect it. If he was a genius like Pidge, he could have wired it up so the thing worked for him. Or if he was an engineering prodigy like Hunk, he could have fashioned some sort of bomb from it. He was just Lance though. That had been a reoccurring problem as of late.

He didn’t have time to do anything anyways, as his next visitor was none other than the crown Prince.

“Don’t you aliens know how to knock?” He snapped then his eyes went wide, and he bit his lip. Lotor didn’t seem angry though, actually laughed at Lance’s tone. 

“I do not make a habit of knocking at my own door, but I will try to adjust my behavior in the future,” he replied with an eye-squinting smile that might, if it hadn’t been sported by Voltron’s worst enemy, be described as sparkling.

“They didn’t knock either, and look what happened to them,” Lance said, gesturing towards the broken robot. Lotor’s eyebrow pulled up like it was connected to a string, and wow, Galra could really put some height into their inquisitive looks. He wondered if Keith could make his eyebrows eclipse his forehead too.

“Perhaps I should have introduced your caretaker myself,” Lotor said. Lance grimaced at the idea of having a caretaker. He was a goddamn adult who could make his own ramen noodles, thank you very much. All he needed was a space microwave, and he could be set. “I’ll have another sent up shortly, but it will be able to take care of any requests you may have within reason.”

“So like my own servant?” Lance asked, trying to get away from ‘caretaker’.

“I suppose so, though it will only do what you are allowed to request,” Lotor said, picking up the discarded and misused desk chair. He walked back over to the table, setting it down gingerly and pushing it back under. “You will be able to request food at any time, and we have an extensive library here. You can also ask to train with the robot to keep yourself fit. You can request to go to certain places on the station, and it can take you there. I can assure you won’t be bothered. All of my soldiers know you are on board.”

That shouldn’t make Lance embarrassed, but it did. The whole space station knew he was leashed like a pup and at the mercy of an idiot drone.

“I regret that I won’t be able to stay today nor in the near future,” Lotor continued. Probably off Paladin hunting, Lance thought, and a sudden desperation to keep him there flooded his body, wracking him with waves of grief and fear. As if he could sense it, Lotor said, “It has nothing to do with your friends. They have retreated to an unknown location. I do not know where they are.”

What kind of universe was this that the ruthless leader of the Galra Empire was comforting him?

“They’re going to kick your ass anyway,” Lance said flippantly, hugging his arms to his chest.

“We shall see,” Lotor hummed, and he didn’t seem like he was being challenging or mysterious. It seemed like he was humoring Lance, and if this whole buddy-buddy thing was how it was going to be, Lance just might go insane.

He had to remind himself that he wouldn’t be there for long.

Voltron was coming for him.

Lotor bid him farewell - like an actual, old timey ‘farewell’ - and left him to be alone again. It seemed like alone was going to be a theme of his time until he could break out. Well, there was never a better time for a bit of stretching. Some yoga could totally clear his head. He shook out his arms then his legs and went into the downward dog pose. He liked it because it stretched the muscles in the back of his legs. He switched to doing some stretches with his legs, using the table as a prop. When the second droid came a-floating in, he did his best to ignore it. He alternated pulling his arms up and back behind his head. If he was going to have a lot of time in the future, maybe he could get himself to be as stretchy as he was as a kid. He would admit to doing dance in his youth, and he would admit to fucking loving it. Lance was the best on the team, and all the girls knew it but were surprisingly cool about it. No cat fights like one might have expected after watching those god awful reality shows (that okay, Lance had seen once or twice or maybe four seasons). Sometimes he missed the ugly, sequined outfits and the glitter stuck to the back of his thighs with hairspray. And the hair products! In his dance days, his hair was gelled, sleek, and sassy.

“What I wouldn’t give for some shampoo and conditioner,” he whined out loud. Swooping down to duck his head between his legs, he saw the bot whir over to the wall and flash a light like a scanner. A panel opened up with a small interface next to it that the droid pulsed a laser into. Lance straightened back up and turned to watch as two jars were suctioned into the small shelf. The bot rotated, as if it was looking at him expectantly with that dead blue stare.

He walked over cautiously and took the jars. Inside there was a white paste eerily similar to - dare he say it? - Suave brand shampoo and conditioner. Lance took a whiff of each, and the smelled pleasantly citrus-y but with a twist Lance couldn’t put his finger on.

He looked at the bot and said, “Lotion.”

It went back to its interface, and not twenty seconds later, another jar had appeared. They weren’t made out of glass, more like a grey cross between metal and plastic.

But he could get used to this.

Not the prisoner thing because duh, being Lotor’s lap dog was pretty high on the list of things Lance hated, but this summoning whatever he wanted bullshit? Yeah, that could be nice. He gathered the jars and headed for the bathroom.

“Turn on the shower,” he ordered, and the droid, who had followed him into the bathroom, flew over to the glassed off area and activated the shower with a machine to machine understanding. Lance started stripping while the room filled with steam. He ignored the cold one-eyed observance the droid couldn’t seem to stop doing.

“You know what?” He said after getting his nasty flight suit off. He was addressing the robot of course because there was no one else around, silly. “I’m going to call you Jeeves. That’s a good name for a robo-butler.”

Jeeves, predictably, did not answer.

Lance stepped into the shower that, thankfully, had a door like normal doors. He didn’t think he could take a futuristic auto-sliding shower door. That would be crossing the line. He put his hand under the spray, but it was a little too hot for his tastes. A moment later it cooled, the shower reacting to his body temperature and adjusting accordingly. It felt nice - no, nice wasn’t a strong enough word; it felt fucking amazing. He didn’t know how much time he had already spent here (too much, his doubts whispered), but washing off the sweat and slime borne of hours of magical torture was one of the few come-to-Jesus moments he’d had in his life. The absolute bliss he got from scrubbing the space shampoo into his hair was good enough proof that there was divinity out there somewhere. He thought back to the first time he saw the light. Her name was Marsha Johnston, and she had some fantastic tits. He would have wondered what Marsha was doing now, if she remembered him, but that would have been a huge downer so he focused on his shower.

“Towel.” Freshly clean, a humming Lance stepped out of the shower and reached out for the plush towel gliding towards his hand. His flight suit, discarded and dirty, glared at him accusingly from the floor. The thought of putting that thing back on over his moisturized skin made his flesh crawl. He exited the bathroom without looking at it again and eyed the outfit on the bed warily. Lance wrapped the towel around his waist, tucking it in securely, and marched towards the bed to inspect the clothing. It wasn’t half bad.

The pants were long and flowy like something out of a 1970s movie, patterned in gold swirls against a lilac fabric. He looked for a shirt, but there was only a chiffon vest. A little unusual, but it wasn’t like the room was cold. If it was, he could just ask Jeeves to crank up the heat, no biggie. It did feel nice against his back. Under those two items, he found an assortment of gold bracelets and a necklace. Lance wouldn’t go as far as to wear them, but they were rather beautiful. What looked like old pirate coins hung from all the bracelets, and the necklace was a chandelier type with some sort of purple gems at the meeting of each thin gold cord.

He chucked the jewelry up onto the floor next to the bed.

It was unclear how many days he’d been there, so he started to count his sleep cycles. Lance knew he was sleeping more than usual, but he needed something to keep track. As it turned out, Jeeves had a lot of “entertainment” settings. There was combat mode where Lance could practice dodging lasers for a few hours, and there was music mode. Galra didn’t have music of their own, but Lance had his pick of their conquered world’s tunes. He’d fallen in love with one of the world's’ swing music. When Jeeves played the track, it said the name of the singer or maybe the band, and he could almost pronounce some of them. Jeeves knew the passcode for the desk and let him fiddle with that sometimes. It had a weird form of Dig Dug that he’d already beaten three times, but there was also a language learning program that he’d taken to. Slowly, he was beginning to understand some of the characters.

It had been five sleep cycles when he broached the idea that Voltron was having a difficult time finding him. Maybe they were still really banged up after the battle and were recuperating. Keith was probably going crazy without someone to argue with, and the thought made Lance smile. He tested out a few one-liners on Jeeves, but as usual, it got him nowhere. But in all honesty, he was getting a little worried. Not for himself, of course, but for the team. Could one of them be hurt? The last he’d heard, Hunk was soaring towards the escape pod that Keith was in. Lance could only hope they made it out without too much damage.

 

Keith had taken to sleeping in Lance’s room. His practice schedule became more full than usual, and he became a ghost. Meals and team practices were the only times anyone ever saw him, otherwise he was in solo combat training or sulking around Red. Allura had used her tentative connection to the lions to pilot Blue. Nobody liked it because the Blue Lion was Lance’s, but they had to move on, keep fighting. Just like Lotor predicted, they couldn’t form Voltron, and they were down a bayard now. Hunk tried to take on some of Lance’s class-clown duties, but he didn’t have the same infuriating confidence nor did he ooze swagger like Lance did. Pidge pitched in sometimes though her humor was too dry and caustic, sometimes too scientific.

They’d been on two missions since it happened. They had almost been too easy, but this third one held a whole new bag of tricks.

“Pidge, get out of there!” Shiro ordered, and she tried to avoid the new Galra monster’s attack. It must have missed by barely inches. Covered in massive scales, it was like an armoured lungfish except that it could also fly. Its main attack was ramming, but it was sent by the Galra druids so of course there was something a little extra. It had four long maybe-whiskers possibly-limbs protruding from its sides that acted as electrified whips. When it dove back underwater, it could fuck with the electrical systems of the Lions if they went after it.

The thing screeched, furious that it had missed Pidge, and rolled over in mid-air, bringing a crackling whisker bearing down on her. The Red Lion was the fastest. Keith demonstrated by suddenly being there when the limb hit, taking the blow for Pidge. Lightning zinged through his lion, shocking his hands from the controls and making him convulse. If it hadn’t been for the seatbelts, he would have been writhing on the floor.

“-eith, are you…” A voice buzzed through his comm, but it was mostly fried. His display had gone black, and it was rebooting slowly when a massive force slammed into him. He thought it was the creature about to smash him up like a crumbling cookie, but he realized it was Hunk when his display flickered back on. His hands were numb though he could see them moving. Keith went immediately back to the controls.

“No way to… armor too thi - etreat until recov - ” Shiro’s voice was broken but his commands clear. The creature roared like it knew it had won, exposing the slimy, bulging inside of its mouth. Hunk had one paw hooked around Keith’s lion, was dragging him back, when he shook him off.

Boosting his commlink to max power, Keith said, “I’m going in.”

“Don’t!” Someone, maybe all of them, yelled before the link fizzed out. It was still buzzing in his ear, so he threw off his helmet, barrelling down on the creature. It started to slither towards him, great big head tilting in preparation for the blow. Keith fired off a few test shots at its face, but none of them got it to bellow like it had before. Allura seemed to catch on just in time; Keith saw a bright blue beam hit the thing in the face, right above the eye. The creature’s lips pulled back into a rumbling growl, and as Keith was flying past, he took his chance, banking in between a slot in the thing’s teeth. He flew as far down the throat as he dared before open firing, giving it everything he could think of. Gunk and steaming green blood exploded everywhere, smearing all over the Red Lion. Its cries were magnified inside itself, and Keith’s ears were ringing with its final death wails. He was able to laser his way out, bursting forth from the back of its neck.

It fell, face first into a mountainside. Hunk’s face flickered onto the bottom corner of his screen.

“Keith that was amazing!” He said and fist pumped the air.

“And very reckless,” Shiro commented dryly, popping up next to Hunk. Allura and Pidge quickly followed.

“That was a good shot, Allura,” Keith said and maybe there was a tiny hint of a smile. The Altean princess didn’t look pleased.

“I don’t think it was me. Blue kind of took over,” she said, a frown coloring her tone. “Let’s get back to the base. We need to talk, Shiro.”

Back at the castle, Keith clamored out of his lion, wrinkling his nose at the stench of creature-insides. His lion needed a bath. So did he, honestly, but he wasn’t going anywhere until he found out what Allura had to say. He found her and Shiro back in the bridge, and it seemed like she hadn’t quite started explaining yet. Her eyes narrowed when he came in, but both of them allowed Keith to be there, probably knowing he would fight them if they told him to leave.

“Do you know what ghosts are?” Allura asked. “Do you have them where you’re from?”

Shiro cocked his head and answered, “They’re kind of a myth. Some people believe in them, but they’ve never been proven to exist.”

Lance believed in ghosts. Keith had a long conversation with him about how absurd ghosts were, but Lance couldn’t get past the fact that Keith whole heartedly believed in aliens (among other conspiracy theories). Obviously aliens were real, and besides, it was just way more statistically likely that other life existed in the universe than if dead people were still hanging around.

“It was similar for Altea, and I did not think they existed until today,” she said, and wow could a sentence get anymore creepy?

“Just say what you mean,” Keith griped, making Allura sigh.

She squared her shoulders and said, “I think Lance is haunting the Blue Lion.”

“Bullshit,” Keith growled.

“You don’t understand, it’s like I can still feel him there! And this morning when I first touched the console… it was like a flash of memory, and Lance was in it. Then during the fight, something took control and made that shot,” she explained in a rush. Allura’s fingers curled into fists and then back again before she said coolly, “You don’t have to believe me. I just wanted to tell you in case it affected us during another encounter.”

Keith’s face crumpled into a sneer.

“I know what grief can do to people, and it’s perfectly natural for you to be seeing Lance,” Shiro said evenly. He put a hand on Allura’s shoulder.

She pulled back and said, “I know what happened. If you’ll excuse me, I need to run diagnostics on the castle.”

Allura turned heel and marched off. Shiro turned back to talk to Keith, but Keith was already gone. Hands shoved in his pockets, Keith stalked towards the lion’s hangars. Ghosts were bullsiht. Allura was bullshit. There was nothing wrong with the Blue Lion, and Keith was going to prove it. Sure, once he was in the hangar he felt a presence staring at him, tracking him, but it was probably just Blue. Keith felt something similar when around Red sometimes. He opened the access port for the lion and walked up into the cockpit. It was quiet. No rattling of unearthly chains or moans of the damned.

He ran his fingers over the headrest of the seat. Had it already been two weeks? Lance was already in the past, but Keith couldn’t let him fade. He was still adjusting to breathing air again after all this time of breathing Lance. The team was still quiet sometimes, but it was headed back to how it was.

He needed to go.

There was nothing for him here.

But as he went to press the button that would let him out, a vivid memory was yanked in front of his eyes. Not a memory. Not his anyway. It was a fracture of time; Lance, standing by the door to the cockpit, one hand on the frame. His serene, loving smile ripped through Keith’s patched up emotions. Atta girl, he said softly, and Keith fell to his knees without realizing he’d lost the strength to stand. It was an intimate moment between Lance and Blue that he had no right to trespass on, but Lance’s voice. It had become dim, an echo of what he truly sounded like, but this was a perfect replica. No distortion of technology or time. As the scene faded, Keith scrambled to get it back. He ran his fingers over every available surface, but nothing sparked.

He was out of the Lion before he had time to act on the sudden urge to smash everything in sight. The hallways of the castle had always been a maze, but it was a blessing now. He just wanted to get lost in his goddamn angst for twelve minutes without Shiro or anyone else bothering him. Of course, that was when he came upon Allura. She was sitting in the hallway, leaning against the door to the room where her father was once housed as an AI. Obviously, she’d been crying which, wow, made Keith feel like a dick. He stopped in front of her, but she wouldn’t look at him.

He was out of breath when he said, “I saw it too. I believe you.”

She stood and hesitated before he took the initiative, opening his arms. Allura was a very good hugger, objectively speaking. She’d put her arms over his and bent her head to rest on his shoulder. It was different, but god, he needed this. Physical affection was hard to come by for Keith, so this was a rare and happy occasion.

“I did not think I could lose someone else I loved,” she whispered. “I’m still not sure I’ll survive this.” Then Keith remembered that they had something in common. Any kind of family, any home, either of them had was long gone. Except for their new family in Voltron.

“We’ve done this before. You’re strong,” Keith assured her, and he felt her hands bunch the fabric of his shirt.

“I can try my best to pilot the Blue Lion, but it only reminds me of him. Every time I touch her, I feel like I’m betraying him,” she confessed, and the only thing he knew to do was hug her tighter.

“He wouldn’t want us to fall apart,” Keith said. The truth of it hit him like an emotional punch to the gut. Lance would probably rise from the grave and bitch slap them all himself if they stopped trying to save people because of this. Allura pulled back, putting her hands on Keith’s shoulders.

“Then we must move forward,” she declared, a smile in her eyes behind the tears. Apparently, Keith had said something right. That was a bit of a first for him. She gave him a kiss on the cheek which surprised him a little, but it wasn’t entirely unwelcome. “Please try to be with the team more. If we are ever going to have a chance at forming Voltron again, we cannot isolate ourselves.”

“Deal,” Keith said and gave her the best approximation of a smile he could make. She touched his arm one last time before saying goodbye. She went back towards the hangar, and Keith wondered if she was going back to Blue. Maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t the end of the whole universe if they lost a Paladin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Season 3 just came out!!!!! It's really exciting although now I have to add that this work is seriously non-canon. You probably already caught that, but I wrote this without knowledge of Lotor's personality or any of that stuff. But holy shit......... Lotor is actually kind of fantastic..... Like as a character.... And that hair tho...


	4. Chapter 4

“Jeeves, it’s the end of the universe!” Lance cried, jumping up dramatically onto the table. His overall dramaticness had increased 300% now that all he had was a robo-friend. He fell onto his back, bending his arm out into the air towards Jeeves like a Shakespearean tragic hero. “My nail! Emergency nail clippers stat!” 

Jeeves floated back towards the panel and ordered a pair of nail clippers. They were just a little different than Earth clippers, more rounded and of course bigger. Lance set to work trimming his nails, wincing when he got to the broken one. It wasn’t too deep that he couldn’t cut it, but it hurt like a bitch. 

“My nails have gotten so flimsy,” he lamented and tossed the clippers back into the panel. He gave himself ten points whenever he made it in. He was currently up to three hundred and ten points. “It’s probably my Vitamin D levels. I’ve been trapped in this dark, dank cell for so long, my nails are peeling! Don’t you have anywhere to have fun in the sun here?” 

Jeeves went to the door, and it opened. It had never done that for him before. Jeeves swiveled, looking at him as expectantly as a robot could.

“Are you taking me somewhere with sunlight?” Lance flipped over and off the desk, landing on all fours before jogging over to the door. When he started following, Jeeves turned back and floated quietly out the door. Lance got to see the hallway for the first time, and then he got to see another hallway for the first time, and then… well, let’s just say Galran hallways looked pretty much the same. He came across a few soldiers which he kindly averted his eyes from. He ignored them like they were annoying Chemistry partners, and he was walking by them on campus. Along the hallway, there was one room that didn’t have a door on it, so of course Lance figured he could just walk his happy ass in there. Little did he know that the little circlet around his ankle wasn’t going to like that. It delivered a shock up his leg, building the longer he stayed in the room. Needless to say, he hightailed it out of there.

Jeeves was waiting with his blue eye and his silence. Lance didn’t try to explore any more rooms.

They got to the end of a hallway, and Jeeves stared at the keypad until the door opened. Inside was like a scene from Journey to the Center of the Earth without the dinosaurs. A space garden of Eden. It reminded him of Earth so much he had to take a step back and breathe for a moment. Jeeves was already in, waiting for him.

“So this is what you’ve been hiding from me, buddy,” Lance said off-handedly. He stepped into the massive room, staring wide-eyed and slack-jawed. 

A huge ball of plasma hung suspended in the air on the ceiling like a tiny sun but also like a disco ball. The roof sloped down and disappeared behind lush swaths of trees. Trees so green it was like he’d forgotten the color until they’d reminded him. Down a small hill in front of him, a pond waited, fed by a rocky waterfall. Vines of flowers - they almost looked like honeysuckle - wreathed the tree limbs. He could already feel the warmth of the fake sun against his face, and it was the best damn thing he’d felt in a long while. Even with missions for Voltron, they hardly ever had time to sit back and relax, enjoy the cool breeze on a Summer’s evening. His eyes drifted closed, and he stood for as long as he could before his face started to burn.

Lance followed a small pathway down to the pond and stuck his feet in. He hadn’t been provided with shoes, so he may as well take advantage. The water was blissfully warm; he started taking off the rest of his clothes almost immediately. The leggings got a little wet from his toes, but they’d survive. As he slowly waded in, his muscles felt like they were relaxing one by one until he became a completely submerged mess of goo held together by brown skin and luck. Jeeves had stayed on shore, and Lance took a small amount of time out of his bliss to wonder what would happen if Jeeves got wet. He had no concept of how long he was there - didn’t care really. He refused to let his thoughts go morose when he figured he had nothing better to do. After a while he felt almost weightless like he’d melted and became the water itself. That would have been cool. He was the Blue Paladin, so he and water were tight.

His mutinous brain conjured up vibrant memories of sparkling summers spent at beaches scorched and blackened, children thronging the shores like oddly colored shells. Waves bigger than his two tallest cousins swirled little kids in its watery jaws, chewing them up and spitting them out with grins that stretched the length of the boats that dotted the horizon. Sand snuggled its way into unmentionable places, sand that he found months after being away from his rightful place among the shoals and tides. The younger kids used to play games during high tide under the pier. They took turns, two at a time, to see who could collect the most barnacles off the thick pillars. One kid was designated the timekeeper with an old pocket watch someone found. It still gleamed in some spots, but the second hand was the only one that worked. Lance wouldn’t brag, but he held the record for three years running. By the time he was usurped, he was ‘too old’ for those games. He wondered how the barnacle harvest was this year. Or if summer had even come yet.

He would have strangled the person who interrupted him if it hadn’t been the man who held his leash.

“Paladin Lance!” It startled him out of his peaceful float. His eyes snapped open, vision tinged blue. Lotor was standing on the shore with a small smirk and what looked like a towel in his hand. “I see you’ve found our environment simulator. I’m glad it is to your liking.”

Lance swam back over, and Lotor made a show of averting his eyes, offering the towel. Lance couldn’t tell if that was a blush he felt burning on his cheeks or if it was leftover from his basking time. He made quick work of drying and dressing himself, tapping on Lotor’s shoulder when he was finished. Turning back to him, Lotor gave him the body check. His eyes flicked, noticeably slowly, up Lance’s lean frame.

“It is a pity someone as handsome as you has fallen prey to captivity, though I must say, the dress of my people looks exquisite on you,” he rumbled, voice darker, more gravelly than usual. 

“I look great in basically everything,” Lance retorted, knowing full well that he could rock a potato sack. With as many older cousins as he had, it was nearly fate that he’d end up in one eventually. All you really needed was a killer strut and unwavering outward confidence, both of which Lance had in spades.

“Agreed,” Lotor said, and no matter how uncomfortable it made Lance, he was determined not to show it. This was a conversation he would save for later analysis.

“So what’s up, doc?” Lance’s shoulders rose and dropped in what felt like a time warp. Was it the sun? Something about the balmy breeze made everything syrupy, calmingly smooth and tinged with a golden hue. He felt like the broken pocket watch, ticking out seconds but never getting anywhere. It was as if he blinked one more time, he could summon a horde of scantily clad teenagers to bat a blown up beach ball with slick hands coated in suntan oil and sand. Instead, he shook his head, dispelling the little fantasy.

“There is something you should see,” Lotor said cryptically. It was like getting a _can we talk? _text from a partner. Lance followed him back to his room - their room? That was weird. The dull hallways pulled him up out of his foggy dreamland. Ants filed into his stomach and rooted around, looking for nonexistent sweets as his anxiety made him bounce on his heels. A quick thought shot through his head that maybe he could get Jeeves to score him some space pastries. Lotor went straight to the desk and motioned for Lance to sit down. He didn’t know if it was a courtesy thing or an expecting him to fall out once the news broke thing. He could hope for the former, but the squirming in his gut whispered a different story. Lotor touched the screen, and it glowed for him. With a few quick strokes, he found his destination file, pulling up a blurry video.__

____

____

It was the lions. Crackling audio grated against his ears, but the voices of his teammates were nestled between static pops. They were so distant like a bad dream. He tried to remember what they sounded like in person, yet everything was overridden by their fizzing voices on the video. 

_There’s no way to penetrate it. The armor is too thick. Retreat until we’re recovered. ___

__

__Shiro’s orders made his body taut and ready. He was still ready to react at a moment’s notice. On the screen, the lions criss-crossed, flanking a huge mecha-worm. Their form had improved. Even blurred as the video was, he could tell. There was less wasted movement; their flight was looking cleaner._ _

____

____

_I’m going in. ___

____

____

Keith went in. Literally. Pride swelled on top of the nervousness, and that was a strange feeling. That was his Keith. Well, not his Keith. There had been a really confusing brush of lips that happened while he was pretending to sleep, but that could have been any number of freak accidents that only existed in movies and whenever it looked like Lance was getting what he wanted.

_Keith no!_

_Don’t! ___

____

____

_Don’t do it! ___

____

__

____

Then something very strange happened. Lance’s mind disconnected with his physical body. A shock worse than any the guards could deliver tore through him, ripping his consciousness from his flesh. He would have screamed, but of course, the impulse didn’t connect with his lungs. How could it? He was floating above himself, watching the video play on through shallow eyes.

Because there.

There she was.

 

_I’m behind you, Keith! ___

 

Blue.

 

She cut through the air; sun glint off her white polished claws. A bolt bright enough that it couldn’t be expressed through pixels soared from her open mouth into the maw of the worm, opening the way for Keith. Allura’s cry of exultation made his body flinch and his mind prickle like goosebumps. The video cut off, and he stared at the texture of the table. He needed to revise his list, he realized. Of things that were true. It only needed one thing on it. It explained everything - why he was still lounging on Prince Lotor’s flagship instead of kicking space ass and protecting the universe. Why every morning he woke up in that silky, plush bed a weight in the back of his mind got a little heavier. 

He wasn’t needed.

_They didn’t need him. ___

____

____

 

He ignored the worried glances and whispered concerns. Keith would spend as much time with Blue as he damn well pleased. As long as it didn’t affect the team, he didn’t see why it should matter. Allura shied away from her visions of Lance, but Keith was chasing them. Their most recent battle had left them all wiped out. Blue usually seemed more receptive of his probing right after battles, so despite every nerve screaming for sleep, he dragged himself down to the Lion’s bay.

He sat in the pilot’s seat, touched the controls, focused on Lance, but nothing was coming. It had been almost a week since his last one, a little flash of Lance humming to himself while cleaning the cockpit, and Keith was starting to get desperate. Exhausted, he leaned back in the chair, channeling his thoughts to him. His eyes drifted closed, and his hands relaxed on the armrests. A powerful wave of sleep crashed over him; he was out like a light. 

His eyes blinked open, vision fuzzy at first, but it cleared. He was in a room. That wasn’t the surprising part because he was usually in one of those. The room looked an awful lot like the Blade of Marmora base, but he could have sworn he was last in the hangar bay. The bed caught his attention almost immediately. Inset into the floor, Lance was sleeping peacefully on it. 

First of all, he could acknowledge that he was dreaming. He had always been unusually perceptive in his dreams, he could also acknowledge that he was a sick, sick bastard. Because, okay, dreaming about Lance was one thing, but dreaming about him in that was totally different. The pants hugged his ass like they were tailor made to make Keith stare, and he couldn’t say anything about the shirt because there was none. There was a puffy, see-through vest, but that hid none of the lean muscle that Lance had been working on. There were the telltale signs of a six-pack, and Lance had the potential to be fucking ripped. 

Lance looked like he had been crying. Keith had never wanted to console one of his figments of imagination so badly before, and it hurt to just stare. There was the voyeuristic guilt on top of the unbelievable urge to protect. He took a step forward, glad that this wasn’t a dream he was trapped in, and approached the bed carefully. If he crouched on the bottom stair, he could just reach out to touch Lance’s shoulder. He was warm.

Keith’s awareness finally yanked him out of his little fantasy. He was out of the hangar bay in six seconds flat, heart pumping like an overworked steam engine. This was not the time for his hormones to be fucking shit up. Sure he’d almost always wanted to bang Lance like a screen door in a hurricane, but fantasizing about his dead teammate was crossing so many lines. And on top of that, he suddenly had a fetish for his Galran half? Self discovering was an enlightening and terrifying thing, but why else would his twisted subconscious conjure up Lance, sleeping in some courtesan’s outfit in a Galran bedroom? The answer: he needed to stop. 

Yet, his brain ignored his own well-meaning advice, running off with this new image. It was almost too fast for him to keep up, but his mind ran through another world where Keith’s mother had stayed with the Galra, raised him there, and Lance was some unlucky sap who’d been taken with the conquering of a planet. Keith’s chest ached when he thought that would be the sight that greeted me when I got home. It was straight out of some horrible porn flick, but Keith found himself gripped with a breathless longing for the domestic in Lance. He never thought himself much of a traditionalist, but it suddenly occurred to him that if he could keep Lance locked up like some suburban housewife, he’d do it. Anything if it meant having him back.

He was away from the shame of his more base nature and was back to the usual soul-crushing grief. It was unfair that Keith had had so much taken from him in his life. His family, every foster family after that, and now Lance. Every time someone left, it had hurt a little less, but this was killing Keith. 

Interrupting another one of his angst-fests as Pidge so affectionately called them, Allura’s voice came over the castle’s comms.

“I’d like everyone to report to the bridge as quickly as possible, please,” she said. It didn’t sound like anything was wrong, but Keith didn’t have anything better to do. He ambled along, finding the rest of his Paladin pals tired and grumpy from being awoken from their naps. Except Shiro, of course. It was like that man didn’t know how to be tired.

“What’s this about?” Pidge asked, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. 

Allura motioned towards the wide expanse of window and said, “That star is less than a hundred years old.”

All of them got closer to see it, finding it remarkably similar to other stars. Mostly white-ish, big, and circular. 

“It doesn’t have a name in the main cortex yet,” Coran said, seemingly hinting at something that Keith wasn’t awake enough to get. Allura smiled and glanced at Coran.

“We thought that we could officially name it Lance,” she continued, beaming from ear to ear. “And I know we don’t have a body, but Alteans have a burial custom of sending our loved ones into the hearts of stars so that they can be a part of giving life to all the planets in the system. I would like to do that, if you would like to as well.”

“Yes,” Hunk answered immediately. “I mean - it just doesn’t seemed right, leaving his soul without any sort of proper closure.” Allura’s smile, her eyes now misted with a thin film, grew even wider, as she replied my thoughts exactly. 

“Lance made this for me when I had the slipperies,” Coran said, holding out a finely stitched handkerchief. Keith had no idea Lance could embroider, but a swooping C was sewn into the corner in blue thread. It seemed Allura had the foresight to make a collection box. It was a standard Altean Tupperware kind of thing, but it didn’t have to be anything fancy to get Keith all choked up. Coran put the piece of fabric into the box, pulling his hand away with a small sniffle like he was going to need another one really soon.

“He gave this to me a few weeks after we met, using one of his terrible lines on me,” Allura said, following Coran. She held out a small silver coin and let it slide off her hand into the box. “He said ‘here, you should keep this because baby you’re a dime’ and then did his finger guns at me. I’ve been carrying it since he… But I think it’s time I let it go.”

Of fucking course Lance would say that. Keith wanted to mimic Pidge when she put her hands to the bridge of her nose and shook her head slowly, but all he did was let the smallest of smiles creep onto his face. Hunk contributed a molded cup of horchata that he’d made for Lance that the guy just never got around to drinking. Hunk hadn’t been able to bring himself to throw it away but figured this would be the perfect way to give it to Lance. Pidge, so like herself, strapped on a modified version of their jetpacks. She explained that Lance had requested more thrust power - only after he made a lewd joke about it - and she’d been working on it. This was the prototype. Shiro’s speech was either heartwarming or heart wrenching, Keith couldn’t really tell anymore.

He talked about how Lance had admired him since the Garrison, but now it was Shiro who admired Lance because of his bravery and selflessness. Lance had always been happy-go-lucky, able to lift anyone’s spirits, and he was a cherished part of the team that isn’t the same now without him. Keith felt like they should all be toasting and clinking glasses of whiskey. Shiro didn’t have anything material for Lance, but he wished he did. 

Keith didn’t stay for the very end of it, jogging briskly towards the practice room. When he got back, they seemed surprised to see him which was kind of insulting. He shrugged the mangled practice drone off his shoulder.

“We were practicing one day, and Lance was doing really good, and we just fucking destroyed the sentinel,” he explained. Pidge set to work attaching one of its arms to the back of the rocket thrusters.

When they launched it, Keith almost cried, but none of his tears fell. It was like they were trapped behind a glassy window, making his eyes heavy. They all crowded close to the bridge’s view except Allura who was pulling up a close up of the projectile. She put it in the corner, and honestly, it was some much needed comedic relief. The drone they’d stuck to it was spinning madly in the wake of the thrusters, limbs thrusting into space at unnatural angles. It looked too silly to be sombre, which is exactly what Lance would have wanted. The flailing hand of the sentinel flew up to its head and got lodged in the forehead with the impact. 

Immediately, Pidge stiffened and copied the salute. It spread through the rest of the Earth-Paladins, as they saluted the memory of their friend while it careened towards the sun. Shiro turned and looked back at Allura and Coran who, just as teary-eyed, seemed to be doing the Altean version of the salute. 

“Allura, how many guns does the castle have?” Shiro asked.

“As many as you need,” she replied, and Keith was pretty sure that if he’d needed a million she would have made it happen. 

“Fire twenty-one of them,” he said, and seconds later, the reverberations of heavy artillery guns reached the bridge. 

“How long would you like them to go?” Another round shook the floor.

“Until he’s gone,” Shiro said. Hunk was holding back his sobs because if he gave into his urges to double over and bawl, he couldn’t give his friend the send-off he deserved. Every few seconds, like a heartbeat, they could feel the artillery in their bones. It continued until even the long-range cameras couldn’t pick up the box anymore. It was quiet. Hunk let his grief take a hold of his voice. He’d fallen to his knees, bent his head to what would have been the sky. Shiro put a hand on his shoulder but could do nothing more. Pidge hadn’t moved, had let the tears fall over her face like a silent stream, hadn’t even lowered her arm. Keith was suddenly struck by how young she was - younger than all of them. It wasn’t her first loss, but she reminded him so much of his own life that it ached on top of the already blinding pain. When Allura appeared to hug him, he hadn’t realized he was shaking. He wrapped his arms around her tightly, and he was so glad he could. 

“I’m sorry for what I said,” Pidge suddenly blurted out. She was rubbing vigorously at her eyes, glasses hanging precariously from her fingers. “Shiro.” It caught his attention, but she also tugged on his shirt. “When I said it’s your fault, I was just really mad. It isn’t anyone’s fault. Lance chose that, and nobody made him.”

“I…” Shiro almost sounded like he was going to protest, but Pidge shoved herself into his torso, giving him a hug so tight, Keith could see Shiro struggle to breathe behind his smile.

“We’re going to be okay,” Allura breathed next to his ear because they were still hugging. She was reassuring him and herself, the doubt in her tone overridden by a fierce determination.

“Yeah,” he replied and stared into the star above the battle stations. The glass was tinted, so it didn’t hurt his eyes as much as it could have. It drifted slowly until it was out of sight. The castle had moved on.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry I haven't been posting!!! The first few weeks of college are #hectic. I'm still working out the ending, but it's coming. By posting this story, it means I have to finish it. I am Motivated.

Lotor’s hand was heavy on his shoulder, and it took him a long time to realize that. When he settled back into his body, he felt tired. His skin sagged, and his bones felt hollow. Jeeves hovered closely next to his head. He turned away from Lotor’s stare, his sympathy. It was one thing to be left behind by the people you would - and almost did - die for, but having that pity burn into his face was unbearable. Lance had thought that the people he’d driven through a wormhole with would have had a deeper connection with him than dropping his ass like a hot tamale at the first sign of trouble. Of _failure. ___

____

____

Was it Allura who’d advocated for leaving him to rot? Alteans were militant, but he didn’t want to put the word ruthless to such a pretty face. It could have been Shiro. Weary from seeing so many people slaughtered, unwilling to send his friends into another trap. Lance almost couldn’t blame him. Almost. He couldn’t believe Hunk had just gone along with it, but maybe he was overestimating his friend. Hunk was notoriously a coward, even if he could do some amazing things when he braved up. He didn’t want - couldn’t - believe that _Keith_ … Maybe, with all his perceptive people skills, he needed to realize that everyone had just been tolerating him for the sake of Voltron. Now that Allura had stepped up, Allura with probably decades of battle experience, who really wanted to stick their neck out for big-mouthed Lance?

____

____

It was easier to believe they’d never liked him in the first place. Every time he’d push Pidge about her family, she would snap at him like a venomous snake. He’d gotten Hunk into situations he never would have been in otherwise like, say, sending them halfway across the galaxy, away from their families and futures. Lance figured that was a pretty good reason to hate a guy. He’d never known Shiro, had questioned his authority on a few different occasions. There was no history there, just like with Allura. She’d never responded to any of his flirting which, granted, wasn’t a sign of hatred. A girl could just not like a guy like that. But it wasn’t hard for Lance to see himself through her eyes - an obnoxious Earthling who couldn’t get the message that she wasn’t interested and his ears were hideous. At least Coran owed him his life, so Lance figured maybe that counted for something. Obviously Altean culture didn’t have any sort of reciprocity clauses. And Keith. Keith was an asshole. Nevermind that Lance had fallen for him in the ugliest, most embarrassing, most inconvenient way possible. Keith didn’t owe him anything as his space crush, but he thought they’d become comrades, you know, like brothers-in-arms kind of thing. Clearly, he’d thought wrong.

“Jeeves.” His voice didn’t sound like his own, sounded tight and grating. “Take me to the place with sunshine.”

Jeeves floated silently to the door and opened it, turning expectantly. Lance didn’t give Lotor another glance and followed the robot. 

As if the world hadn’t shoved enough shit down his throat already, it wasn’t even sunny when they got to the environment simulator. It was raining. Lance felt personally attacked but then decided maybe this was better. Stepping in, he couldn’t tell what was tears and what was warm jungle rain on his face. He was soaked through, lavish vest sticking to his chest like the useless piece of cloth it was. Lance made his way to the rock face next to the little pond, climbing up to reach the very top. From there, he could see where the room curved down into termination behind some trees he could see the tops of. The ball of sun had been enveloped in white clouds, and the rain fell from the ceiling. He was at the apex of the room, the center. His own little paradise was weeping for him, and he basked in the eye of the storm. 

The _tink tink_ of the rain hitting Jeeves reminded him of hiding under his _abuela’s_ old pickup playing hide-and-seek with his cousins. He knew now what happened if Jeeves got wet. There was no sparking or shorting, the water just rolled off him. Lance wished he could be more like Jeeves, wished things would just roll off him. But alas, he took being personally left by his personal possibly-friends pretty, you know, _personally._ Jeeves stared at him for a long while, giving Lance the feel the bot was processing something. Finally, he hovered over and settled his pyramid body directly over Lance’s head. He acted like an umbrella, a shitty one but it’s the thought that counts. He no longer had a family, no longer had a team; he didn’t even have anyone to relate to. Every Earthling was a billion light years away, blissfully munching on toast and putting on makeup, unaware a huge alien empire was going to crush them into submission unless five teenagers put a stop to it. It didn’t feel like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders now that he didn’t have that responsibility. He felt absolutely helpless. He would rather be out there doing something to make sure his family ( _Theresa is only five years old_ ) was safe, but he was stuck here.

So if he wailed like a child abandoned on the church steps, no one was there to witness.

 

Later, Lance was rudely awakened by the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. He cast his gaze around the dark, empty room, only finding Jeeves at his charging station. The bot was beginning to boot up again now that he was moving. Lance couldn’t remember dreaming about anything specific, but the presence he’d felt had been distinctly Keith-flavored. He didn’t remember most of his dreams nowadays but knew they were about the team because he’d wake up with a tightness in his chest and a wet spot on his pillow. He was sleeping a lot. When he wasn’t sleeping, he was sulking, waiting to fall asleep again. His eyes hurt, but they were usually pretty dry. 

He spent a lot of time in the environment simulator which he’d come to call the Oasis. He didn’t have the energy for anything else, though Jeeves had taken to playing some music without request sometimes on the days he didn’t get out of bed. Lance also stopped counting the days he’d been there. It didn’t matter much now that no one would ever care. Lotor would check on him every so often, and that didn’t bother him as much as he thought. It was hard to feel petty things like shame with a gaping void in his chest. 

“What’s on tap for today, buddy?” Lance asked in a sad, jaded attempt to alleviate some of the silence. The bot started playing a song, and Lance felt understood by the little guy. “I agree, Jeeves. Country music is the music of pain.” He relaxed back into the bed, listening to the honey-sweet voice of an alien probably singing about her cheating lover. A powerful wave of loneliness made him frown.

“Hey, Jeeves, switch it off for a second.” Silence. “Come here.” He floated over, settling on Lance’s pillow. He looked very much like a strange, alternate version of a dog. Lance ran his fingers down the smooth planes of his metal plating, and petting would be the best way to describe it. “You wouldn’t leave me, would you?”

Jeeves, predictably, did not answer. He stared with that big, dead, blue eye. A shiver of something hot passed through the blank space in Lance’s chest.

“Jeeves!” He said, louder, and gripped the bot tightly. “You wouldn’t do what they did, right? You’d save me. Right?”

He did not answer, only stared. An anger so all-encompassing gripped Lance so fast, he felt like he was spinning. Bile bubbled in his throat, making his throat constrict, forcing it back down. He was drowning, and he was out of breath, panting for every inhale. His thoughts crowded into the front of his forehead, vicious and bitter, until he felt absolutely feverish. His fingers dug into Jeeves, but he barely registered the ache of holding so tightly. 

“Save me,” Lance demanded breathlessly, staring into that passive blue. Jeeves did nothing. Lance raised him up into the air and brought him down as hard as he could against the stairs on the edge of the bed. They were metal and gave off sparks when Jeeves contacted. Lance kept going, smashing the robot into a twisted hunk of shards and wires. Bits and bolts flew everywhere, cutting his fingers all to hell. Blood streamed from his hands, wetting the bed sheets, but he didn’t stop - he couldn’t. Vaguely, he could hear himself gasping, could hear the broken mantra of save me save me pouring from his dry lips. His eyes, well used to the feeling, opened like faucets, gushing with hot, salted tears. He let himself get consumed by this rage, and when it was done, he didn’t feel hollow. He felt satisfied for the first time in weeks, but there was a horror seeping in between the cracks in this new contentment.

Quickly, his satisfaction was ripped away, leaving him alone in a bedroom that still wasn’t his, clutching the shattered remains of the only thing he could have remotely called a friend. His hands were shaking, as he fought to regain some of his triumph. The pain itself was grounding in a way that kept his thoughts from flying apart. The door opened, bringing with it a new light to shed onto his brutality. It glinted off of his bloody hands, made them throb that much more. Slowly, he turned to look at the light, face a portrait of desperation, of agony. Lotor’s brows were pulled together in concern. Arms that could break and beat and kill picked Lance up gently. He clung to the tenderness, swallowing his hatred and indulging in this moment of genuine contact. 

“I think it would be best if I took you away from here,” Lotor said, carrying him away. Lance felt pressure against his ankle and then the release of the thin anklet that kept him shackled to certain paths. Lance closed his eyes, counting the number of steps in time with Lotor’s breaths. It kept his mind occupied. A few minutes later, Lotor put him upright in a passenger seat of the cockpit of a small transport. He fastened the seat belts for Lance, and when he was done, went back outside to argue with someone in hushed tones. 

Lance thought he caught snippets. _Only a few days. Needs. Paladins are nearing._ A growled order. _Take care of it._

When Lotor came back, there was tension in his shoulders, but that was all that was left of the previous hostility. He set up the ship for autopilot and launched. It was very smooth considering Lance’s experience with the Lions. He didn’t ask where they were going, nor did Lotor volunteer the information. Lotor, instead, began dressing the wounds on Lance’s hands with a cooling antiseptic gel. It dulled the pain somewhat, and Lance was coherent enough to mutter out a thanks. His mother may have raised a boy with wild self-esteem issues and a freaky psychic connection to a huge ass robot lion, but she didn’t raise a heathen.  

“You should take care of yourself better,” Lotor said, and Lance bristled at the comment. Was there even anything left to take care of?

 

 

He started sleeping in his own room again. Keith wanted to put some distance between himself and whatever the fuck was happening with Blue. Activity had picked up within the Galra empire; more planets needed saving every day. In a way, not being able to form Voltron was a bit of a blessing. It forced them to get better at separated combat, even if they were always on edge that maybe this time, they wouldn’t be able to beat it. Shiro was under constant stress. Keeping tabs on everyone during battle was hard enough, but knowing the most powerful force in the universe - that was made for a reason - was just beyond his fingertips… He had only just gotten out of the habit of saying _Form Vol_ \-- before cutting himself off abruptly. 

Keith was extra special careful to watch out for his teammates. Allura seemed to be having the hardest time, but she still had to deal with the memories. Daily. She was strong though, and he figured if anyone could take it, she could. Hunk was next in line for the Suffering Award. He tried to play it off, but Keith could see him every day questioning why he was even here. Pidge had already had her come to Jesus, stay on the team moment, but Hunk was still floundering. 

Keith was going to fuck off with that though. It wasn’t like he was the team leader. Honestly, if he tried to sit Hunk down and have a bro-to-bro, he might explode. He’d stumble over his words, make it a thousand times more awkward than any moment in history, then explode. If he didn’t, he would voluntarily walk out of the airlock. 

Shiro looked tired, but that was par for the course. They still joked around, having shifted and morphed their humor to fit in their new Altean addition. A lot of it had to do with explaining things to Allura and watching in muted wonder as she experienced Earth memes for the first time. She was just getting the hang of it. For some reason, she was also inexplicably good at roasting Keith which he didn’t appreciate. 

They’d just come from a banquet held in their honor.

“I don’t understand how they can do that though. They elect a leader based on how beautiful they are?” Keith had the unfortunate urge to express his thoughts which laid the pavestones to his demise. 

“Voltron election. Go,” Pidge ordered.

Immediately, Hunk voted, “Shiro.”

“Shiro,” Allura seconded. Pidge hmm-ed in agreement. Shiro, quite dramatically really, threw his hand to his head and bent backwards as far as his meaty torso would allow.

“Maybe he’s born with it,” Pidge crooned, and Shiro swayed.

He snapped back up, tossing his arm in the air and popping out his hip, as Hunk and Pidge sang, “Maybe it’s Maybelline!”

As amusing as it was to watch the leader of Voltron pose like a female superhero in  comic book, Keith just couldn’t stop digging his own grave.

“But beauty isn’t everything you guys,” he said. He was just trying to express his monthly opinion before he receded from contact. He was an innocent passerby trying to get by and didn’t deserve the following put-down.

“Oh sweetie, you’d know,” Allura deadpanned, staring directly into his soul. Pidge’s reaction was immediate, and she fell face-first into the otherworldly soft grass, groaning like the joke had offended her ancestors. Hunk jumped on the chance to cup his hands around his mouth and made an oooo that would rival any third grader’s. Shiro stuck out his arms, falling to one knee to praise Allura like a goddess, and she smiled - it was very subtle - with her arms folded delicately. 

How does anyone come back from something like that? He only hoped Altean magic included some form of necromancy because someone would need to resurrect him. His face turned red, and after a solid three minutes of basking in Allura’s joke, they took pity on him, starting again back towards the Castle. It nearly brought Shiro to tears; he was dabbing at the corners of his eyes when he clapped Keith on the back.

“She makes it look so easy,” Shiro said, the ghost of laughter still coloring his voice. Keith frowned as gloomily as possible.

“She could roast someone else once in awhile,” he grumbled back.

“But then it wouldn’t be as funny,” Shiro said, and if looks could kill, the universe would have been short another paladin. Brushing that morbid thought aside, Keith dropped to the back of the group, keeping his head down and his mouth shut in case Allura, deity of sick burns, deigned to smite him again. Heading up the ramp to the ship was its own fresh hell. Coran was waiting at the mouth, sprite and springy as ever, but there was an extra mischievousness about his demeanor. Keith came up last, and Coran held out a small jar for him to take. Without thinking, Keith took it, holding it up to his scrunched face for examination.

“I heard over comms there was a radical burn, and I thought this could be of some use,” Coran explained with a shit-eating grin. Of course, the laughing started all over again, and his face got all red. He stomped off, lotion in hand, with the pointed barks of their laughs pinged off his retreating back. 

Keith wasn’t really hurt, but he wanted them to think about their deplorable actions before he saw them again at dinner. His plan was to stop by the pool to swim a few laps, but he stopped by Lance’s room to leave the lotion like an offering. On his way out, Allura scared the shit out of him by being right in the doorway when the door slid open. She looked surprised too, and then they were just standing there, Keith awkwardly hanging out in the doorway.

“Come here often?” It was a terrible line whenever it was used, no excuses, and maybe that’s why Keith gravitated to it. Allura’s gaze flicked down, her mouth setting into a guilty grimace before Keith realized he was probably being way too nosy. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, or that you even have to tell me.”

Her eyes, intense and curious, settled again on his face, as she said, “I do, actually. It helps me to think.”

“Is Blue still bothering you?” Keith asked because he didn’t know when to end a conversation. Allura looked down the hallway, and Keith stepped back into the room, letting her decide where she wanted to go. She chose in, brushing past Keith on her way to sit on the bed. He took a seat next to her and waited for her to talk. She took a deep breath.

“The Blue Lion is very… loyal. Every time I pilot her, I see Lance, or she doesn’t respond correctly, or she does what she wants. I do not think it possible that such a creature could grieve, but other alternatives are scarce,” Allura said. It was curious to think the Lions could grieve, but he’s felt strong protective vibes from Red and found it highly likely they all had a range of emotions. 

“It has to be hard - not being able to forget,” Keith said quietly. “The rest of us get to move on, but you have to face him every day.” 

“It must also be difficult to have lost a _loved_ one,” Allura countered, sounding weary. 

____

____

“Yeah it is,” Kieth admitted, and wow, it felt kind of good to acknowledge the hole - even though it was healing - left behind in his chest. 

“For me as well,” she said. They sat in silence for a moment, Allura’s fingers twisted about the fabric at her knees in an uncharacteristic show of anxiety. The air was heavy with the words that were almost spilling from her mouth; even a socially stunted guy like Keith could sense it. 

_I think he’s still alive._

__Keith’s world tilted on its side, thrown off its course. A vine of hope, invasive and ravenous, crawled over his thoughts. Before he got too far, he ripped those up and burned them, consoling himself in the ashes of lies he had no business pursuing._ _

__“What did you say?” It came out like a defensive rattlesnake, and his body coiled to receive another shock._ _

__“I think Lance is still alive,” Allura repeated. “It is the only explanation for how the Blue Lion is acting. She knows he’s still out there.”_ _

__“I thought you said she was grieving.” He had to struggle to not want to believe. “Lance is dead.”_ _

“Maybe he will be if we don’t do anything about it!” Allura hissed, her fists digging into the bedding. Her eyes blazed with a dying determination. “I’ve heard stories of Galra keeping prisoners. To break them and… enjoy them. These rumors were foul, and I’ll not repeat them exactly. But what if that’s happening to _Lance_.” 

___“Why do you have to torture yourself like this?” Keith demanded, adding _and me too_ in his head. There was nothing but despair on this train of thought, and he wanted to hop off as soon as possible. There was no reason for Lotor to keep Lance alive. He didn’t know anything the Galra didn’t - not really. There was no information in it, and in no stretch of the imagination would Lance last as long as Shiro as a gladiator._ _ _

__

__

__“He was in pain, Keith. The last time I saw him, he was in pain like he never should have been when he was here,” she said. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, but he could see the mist forming in hers. He was going to say something, do something comforting, but the blaring alarms interrupted him. Allura jerked up, wiping at her face with the back of her hand. A fresh wave of energy crashed over him; they both hurried, in silence, to the bridge._ _

__Hunk was still on his way, but everyone else had arrived before._ _

__“We found him. Are you sure we’re ready?” Coran asked, positioned over the console as if ready to take immediate action._ _

__“We have to be,” Shiro answered. He was in his armor and locking his helmet into place. Keith’s insides boiled, and he took off to his lion without another glance to Allura. This was going to be over soon. They’d kill Lotor and be done. That was how he needed it to be._ _


End file.
